The winners of the 2025 Piket Art Prizes were announced on Monday at the Theater aan het Spui in The Hague. Carmen Roca Igual (Interactive/Media/Design, 2020) wins in the category Painting. She will receive a cash prize of €6,000 and a unique award, the Hammer, created by artist Joep van Lieshout.
Other winners are: Chandenie Gobardhan (Dance), and Kollektief op Kracht (Theatre). The Piket Jury Prize goes to Cees Debets, director of the National Theatre. The Piket Art Prizes are awarded annually to promising young professional artists in painting, dance, and theatre.
Painting jury members Pietertje van Splunter (artist and co-founder of the artists' initiative Quartair) and Johan Gustavsson (Experimental Art Space 1646, lecturer at the Royal Academy of Art, and curator of Prospects) are impressed with artist Carmen Roca Igual. "The jury appreciates the way Carmen Roca Igual combines research and imagination to capture the contradictions of contemporary digital life. Her ability to translate urgent cultural questions into engaging and multi-layered visual art makes us curious about her development in the coming years as one of the promising artists of her generation."
About Carmen
"I started painting alongside my father; he painted every house we lived in. Art has always been a part of my life. Whenever I was going through a difficult time, my mother would say I looked my most serene while drawing. As for other art forms, to make the fact that we moved countries every year or two less bittersweet, or perhaps because of her acting background, my mother taught us to leave behind everything we didn't like about ourselves. The ability to change, to reinvent, to interpret: these signals are key factors in my work, a constant maturation. Drawing, writing, and playing characters were an integral part of my childhood. I only discovered video when I had a phone with enough storage to film my grandparents and the funny or beautiful moments of everyday life.
